Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division has announced today that it will begin implementing age verification checks on users to align with sweeping social media changes brought about by the UK Online Safety Act. Xbox players who are registered as older than 18 years old, or users logging into their Xbox accounts in the UK, will be prompted about the age verification check starting today, Xbox has confirmed via an official statement. While the check is currently optional, it will become mandatory in early 2026 for UK players who wish to continue accessing Xbox social systems such as voice chat, texting, and game invites.
The logistics of the process are promised to be handled by “several easy and secure methods for age verification”, according to Xbox’s vice president of gaming trust and safety, Kim Kunes, in a blog post on the company’s site. In practice, this appears to be a partnership with digital identity safeguard Yoti, as users are invited to submit items such as proof of government-issued ID, checks on mobile or credit provider, and age estimation. If the user fails to verify their age between now and early next year, Xbox social systems will be restricted to friends only until verification is completed.
The announcement follows a wave of social media platforms implementing similar age verification checks for UK users, as places like BlueSky, Reddit, and Discord brace for the changes brought about by the UK’s Online Safety Act. A somewhat contentious bit of legislation due to take full effect in July 2026, the Online Safety Act has been engineered to ostensibly protect children in the UK from encountering adult or harmful content in online spaces, the onus for which has been placed on platforms that must comply with ID verification practices or face hefty fines. This brand of government intervention in digital spaces has been seen locally too, as Australia struggles to define the limitations on its incoming social media bans that would see users under 16 years old removed from a wide variety of sites, such as social media platforms and YouTube, with similar ID verification systems required of platform holders.
It’s not overly surprising, then, that Xbox has alluded to being open to bringing its age verification process to other countries in the future, with Kunes’ statement noting that Xbox will “learn from the UK process” and that it expects to “roll out age verification processes to more regions in the future. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to player safety, so these methods may look different across regions and experiences.”
The news comes at a time when Microsoft’s relationship with digital surveillance is under intense scrutiny following the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s naming of the company as a priority target for its complicity in “Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.” According to the April statement from BDS, Microsoft had been providing the Israeli Ministry of Defense with access to its Azure cloud and AI services, software it deems “central to accelerating Israel’s genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip”, a stance corroborated by a report from The Associated Press on Israel’s use of AI to select bombing targets.
Microsoft responded to the allegations in an unsigned statement on May 15 in which it acknowledged that while the company did provide access to its software to the IMOD, an internal review conducted with the support of an external party had provided no evidence that the software had been used to “target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.” The statement goes on to note that Microsoft did “provide special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements. In addition to the commercial relationship with the IMOD, Microsoft provided limited emergency support to the Israeli government in the weeks following October 7, 2023, to help rescue hostages.”
While the statement does admit to Microsoft not having full awareness of how its software could be used by the Israeli military, the company was aware of growing concerns among its own employees as it moved to fire two workers after a vocal protest to the potential use of company software in an ongoing genocide. Software engineers Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal were terminated from their positions following a protest that interrupted a Microsoft anniversary event, actions the company deemed to be “designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event.” Elsewhere at the company, employees have been reportedly silenced during attempts to discuss the BDS boycott, and a petition has been circulated in an effort to draw more attention to the complicity and relative lack of action on Microsoft’s part.
It remains to be seen when Xbox’s age verification checks will roll out globally, but for now, the move has faced criticism for being part of the ongoing online privacy and safety issues that emerge when these systems are implemented. Likewise, many users are already using software like VPNs and…Death Stranding 2 to bypass existing ID checking programs, a lean comfort as digital spaces cede more and more ground to government oversight and increasingly abstract demands surrounding NSFW content.
Do you trust your ID information to Microsoft? Be sure to let us know in the comments below and on social media.
One part pretentious academic and one part goofy dickhead, James is often found defending strange games and frowning at the popular ones, but he's happy to play just about everything in between. An unbridled love for FromSoftware's pantheon, a keen eye for vibes first experiences, and an insistence on the Oxford comma have marked his time in the industry.
